Best practices for writing and maintaining PPT macros across templ

[Guest]

I am new to VBscript and PPT macros. I ordered David Marcovitz's book, but
until it arrives, I'm pretty much in the dark as to best practices for
developing reusable macros that span multiple templates and are simple to
maintain.

It seems to be a recurring theme in my group that we want to loop through
our presentations and perform a given operation on the same graphic object
for each slide, for example writing the title text or main body text on each
slide to a file. Furthermore, we may need to process presentations from
other groups using different templates.

To do this, I envision having to do something like the following:
1) create a template (for reuse on multiple presentations)
2) name and store the graphic objects on the slide/title master layouts
(possibly using a macro)
3) create new slides using the one of the layouts, or insert slides from
another presentation and reapply the layout (possibly using a macro)
4) run the slide processing operation of choice.

Does this seem like overkill, or is there a simpler, more maintainable way
to do this?

Your suggestions are greatly appreciated - Jim

 

[Bill Foley]

Actually what you need to do is to open PowerPoint, create your macros,
toolbars to run your macros, etc., then save the presentation as an add-in
(*.ppa). Set up PowerPoint to run this add-in upon opening (Tools,
"Add-ins"). Check out the following for more info:

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00031.htm

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I am new to VBscript and PPT macros. I ordered David Marcovitz's book, but
until it arrives, I'm pretty much in the dark as to best practices for
developing reusable macros that span multiple templates and are simple to
maintain.

Not at all. David's site is a goldmine of code and tips. There are also quite
a few useful bits in the VBA section of www.pptfaq.com, including links to
David's site and others with good VB/VBA info.

It seems to be a recurring theme in my group that we want to loop through
our presentations and perform a given operation on the same graphic object
for each slide, for example writing the title text or main body text on each
slide to a file. Furthermore, we may need to process presentations from
other groups using different templates.

This, from the PPT FAQ, will help, as will the other pages in the same general
area; use the next/previous links to poke around a bit:

Export Slide Number and Title Text to a text file
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00332.htm

You'll also want to look over the info about creating add-ins. Given what
you've described, this is the way to go.